Ascend from Dust to a Breeze
by VaRuka
Summary: Complete The climatic battle rages on, grisly trudging to its end. And from the end a new begining. (My version of the end of Underworld, and of the beginning after the end of the war.)
1. Live to Feel

Ascend from Dust to a Breeze

  
  


.An Underworld fanfiction. 

By VaRuka (Sloth to herself, Servant to everyone, Dominatrix to writing)

  
  
  
  


Author's Note: This is my rewriting of the last sequences of events in Underworld. Also, there will be some events that take place after the my rewritten ending of Underworld that I find fit for the characters. Yay. Yeah. Rock on. Rock off. Just take the rock and throw it.

  
  
  
  
  
  


(clamber to the emotional peak

totter on the knifelike edge 

between the dark and lights of 

rage and dismay and hate

and love and joy

to get lost in the ineffable depths

lost to outsiders that do not

understand)

- By VaRuka

  
  
  
  


.Live to Feel.

  
  


Selene does not know what to do, let alone say after lifting her eyes to his form; all trains of thought have disembarked out her ears, drooping onto the decrepit subway station floor. Her mind is just registering that she has found Michael . . . strapped to a vertical hospital bed, delicious body sweaty from the taxing nights activities toll, hair dashingly straggly and falling in his face to his nose, pale brown eyes wide with relief and brimming with adoration directed precisely her way. He is certainly the basket of apples Snow White once plucked her demise from. *Oh, Selene, what have you to say for yourself now,* she rhetorically ponders, *you traitor? But would I have it any other way?*

A second or two later, she severs eye contact to focus on the beast under her, instincts kicking in and three rounds go deep into the werewolf's skull, positively ensuring its death. 

Now with her mind cranked back up from its momentarily relapse, she steps past the dead werewolf's steaming carcass and strides confidently over to him; with boots thumping, hair sexily jouncing, heart fluttering as a butterfly to its beloved flowers, and face attempting to show no emotion. Michael on the other hand, is laying himself bare to her searing gaze, his face is utterly candid, vibrantly reflecting his inner feelings, as he intensely leans from his bonds towards her oncoming figure; breathing in huffs and puffs, heart pounding out a mantra into his chest of astronomical love for this lethal rose in skin tight leather. 

The wolf in him gutturally howls out: Mine!

"I need to get you out of here." Selene forces these words from her dry throat, eyes reconnecting with his. "Viktor is loose in the underworld as we speak," Her body is now but a fine hair away from his--both draw full breaths of the other's scent, cementing it to memory, fearful they may never have another chance again to be in the other's presence, "and is on a rampage killing lycans, and will . . ."

Ducking her head, she watches her unsheathed claws urgently rake through the nylon straps, tears brimming in her chocolate eyes. " . . .will kill you on sight . . ." 

Michael stares at her features as if bedazzled by her everything, soaking in her words and actions through the lusty fog they equally create while near the other. The nylon quite easily rips for her lengthened nails, releasing the once snared Michael from his imprisonment. Gracefully, he ascends off the examination table to the welcoming ground, gaze never once leaving Selene's downcast eyes. 

As his hand brazenly cups her pale silken cheek, a bloody tear from Selene's eye, so fragile, so minuscule, gravitates to the dirty floor; manifesting one clear and clean ruby blot, signifying something larger than either can imagine at this point in time, providing a clue to tonight's outcome.

"They'll kill you, too," Michael murmurs, rubbing his thumb in a soothing gesture upon her cheek, "just for helping me."

Selene languidly boosts up her head while caressing her tepid cheek to his warm palm. The reply to his comment a simple one, needing no musing before vocalization:

"I know."

He gently settles his forehead against hers; lips close in proximity, ragged breaths mingling. "What do we do?"

*Kiss . . .?* they both offer in thought.

And so, with acute haste the lycan and the vampire fuse mouths. Within seconds the mouths open to release swaying tongues, which are hedonically put to work. Swiftly, Michael snakes his arm around her waist, virulently tugging her shapely body until it is flush against his, which divulges to her his growing arousal. She promptly responds with an elegant moan of pleasure through the pyretic kisses and gasps of breaths, while also coiling her own arm securely around his neck, arranging the kisses to be deeper.

They both feel the spherical world, the ragging chaos of their surroundings, the bloody war of which they are in the middle, the strident hate snugly cloaking lycans and vampires, the whole everything of everything dropping like acid rain to never rear its horrid self again . . .

Only the blaze of their newfound love is visible behind their eyelids, in their ears, tingly each nerve, and flooding their minds.

* I've found someone, after all these bleak years. Never had I thought it possible, never had I thought I could feel, truly, genuinely, sincerely feel anything other than dark hate,* Selene rapturously thinks. *Now I have been proven wrong.*

From each stroke of tongue and each caress of hand this ice queen's heart thaws into a thermal puddle which Michael greedily laps up into his being, and his shattered heart, so broken from long ago love, mends like a demolished mirror seen in reverse. *Okay, I can live with being a lycan-werewolf monster, chain me up on full moons, feed me lots of meat, blah, blah, blah, as long as this vampire, this woman stands right here, by my side,* he hopefully thinks.

Their hearts, their immortal hearts, now belong to each other. 

Take good care, says both cards, these things are delicate.

So many moments later, they come crashing down from their ineffable high. Heads back on earth and not floating in the clouds, the outside world and all the things they promised themselves to forget, sink their talons back into Selene and Michael's minds and senses. Gunshots, wounded cries, feral howls, cat-like hisses, tramping heavy paws, light running footsteps, lethal whip lashes ominously echo from the other passage ways. 

Selene quite reluctantly edges away from Michael. Both are breathing like track runners. Both are tingling from what the other has invoked in their body, mind, and soul. They glance at the doorway out of the makeshift underground lab to the frenzied war zone beyond, and then back to each other at the same time. 

"I have to get you to safety." She raggedly chokes out, eyes still moist with tears held at bay, unwanted, unneeded, but yet still forming from the sticky situation they are in.

He steadily shakes his head and stubbornly replies: 

"We have to get us to safety."

A beat.

Two beats.

"Right, then." Selene gravely agrees, vowing to herself to never let him out of her sight, to protect him from anything and everything . . . to kill whatever and whomever may jeopardize his safety, and their twisted, asphyxiating love.

She does this silently as Michael unwittingly does the same.

Before they set off she extends one of her hands to his like a little lost child, eyes imploring him to lovingly accept without question, while in the same liquid movement she swipes up one of her balefully loaded Beretta pistols with her other hand. Michael examines her stance with a critical eye, assessing the dragon before him, so dazzling in her porcelain attributes and indubitably deadly. His eyes zero in on her snowy hand . . . and he clasps it in his own. 

An urge to just shout all for one and one for all bubbles forth in him, but he stifles it under the grim circumstances.

Selene stares at their joined hands in joyous wonder. She never thought a union between their species possible, let alone, successful. But hope roars inside of her like a century year old wet match somehow empowered with its long evanesced ability, and is brilliantly lit inside her being. Michael stares along with her; astringently hoping they make it out of this apocalyptic hell hole alive, and together, to explore every nook and cranny of his new love with her.

Their trust finalized, she has one more thing to do--well, basically say. She lifts her head to bore her eyes at him, face serene, ready for anything, but dreading.

"Do you love me, Michael?" The words are but whispers, and if he was not a lycan than his ears would have never heard the thick, soft, and vulnerable syllables. 

The world seems to stop its spin as she waits.

His counter is also a barely there whisper, and so frightened is he, that his voice trembles as he speaks, though he masks it a bit with a light tone. "Do you feel the tug of invisible hooks every time I'm near? Does your body thrum from my touch? When your eyes meet mine does everything fade into nothing? Does the thought of me make your insides flip flop? Do I puzzle you into madness? If I'm not around do you yearn for me?" Wholeheartedly into his speech, his voice rises in crescendo and each word has heavier, thicker emotion. "When we just kissed did you feel that something . . . that cosmic something . . . ?" 

She duly answers, with dripping passion lathered on a enthralled, "Yes."

"Then," He shakily shoots her a charming smile; eyes shy under the floppy tentacles of his disarrayed chestnut hair, "you know how I feel."

She flings back a radiant smile, revealing pearly white fangs with fine sharp points. "In classic movie doomed love, with a vampire."

"You could put it that way." 

She tilts her head, to view his frank demeanor at a different angle, shoulder-length satiny hair falling in her eyes so she gazes at him through sable strands. "I certainly shall." A smile curves those lips of hers. "We have the same dilemma; I am in doomed love with a lycan." 

A serious beat to consider this whole mess. Everything. Anything. *I choose my side,* Michael solemnly thinks, *and its: our own.*

They gently squeeze their laced fingers. Eyes are locked, transferring message after message of love and sorrow, hope and defeat. *Love conquers all,* she randomly thinks, *or at least it should.* Selene audaciously steps forward, followed by Michael, into the gory abyss on the other end of the tunnel. No looking back. No looking forward. They both focus on the now, and luckily, making it out of this monstrous Transylvania horror story unshackled from the middle of the vampire vs. lycan out of control genocidal war, with their love still strong as the suns rays, and both equally, alive.


	2. Laughter from God

(mount . . . the now

to live in the future

free . . . our emotions

to thrive in the moment)

- By VaRuka

  
  
  
  
  
  


.Laughter From God.

  
  
  
  


Splash! Their feet patter in the stagnate puddles peppered down the putrid lycan tunnel as they jog forward. The sounds of their trek portentously reverberates throughout the immensely reeking tunnel of thick animalistic scents, raw piss, and rotting flesh, which is cracked and utterly grimy; mingling with the vivid noises from the combat beyond. But still they trudge, unwavering in their goal to find an exit, to see themselves safely away from the underworld. 

A rat scrambles past Michael. He hops to the left with a shocked gasp. 

Glancing over at him, she smirks his way. "That's the least of all creatures you should be terrified of at the moment."

"You try telling that to my jumpy nerves." He yanks his free hand briskly down his face in a mind clearing motion. "Selene . . ." His breathing picks up, eyes closing for a fleeting second. "I fear . . ." The balloon ball in his throat threatens to pop, in turn releasing vocal shards of all his fears to somehow be personified in some hellish birth, so he speedily halts his expression of them, not wanting to jinx they're already seemingly impossible mission. "Nothing." He blurts. A pause, to divert his edgy cinnamon orbs from hers-pace still being kept; so far, so good. "Nothing." 

Selene, utterly bemused, squints her eyes out of concern, mind reeling from one guess to the next. Droplets of foul water plop! down all around them in select little areas. Paving their path are decaying, unrecognizable human and ashy burnt vampire corpses, along with silver riddled werewolves, all giving off a stench that she knows quite familiarly, and that Michael is still aspiring to adapt to. The silence stretches forth until an intersection stops their traveling for a brief instant to decide on which direction to take, and for Selene to deliver some heartfelt words. 

She chokes down her facade of unyielding confidence, flickers moist eyes onto his, and dynamically whispers,. "I know what you swallowed down." He returns her gaze, silently admitting to her accuracy. "And it may come to pass. One of us may never witness another sight outside of the underworld, or maybe both of us are destined to die here." 

Her words feel like a bed of nails they both are cuddling upon, still she is relentless in her speech, and contributes one more sentence:

"But at least we found, what we always thought was lost to our souls, even if but for a blink in the cosmic play of the world, and our very lives."

Michael is aghast at hearing her brush off their deaths so quickly. She means so much to him, more than he every thought a woman after Samantha could. He snaps his mouth open to lay out his turmoil.

"Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Just stop that lovely train of thought right there, before you blow up riding it." His tone is soft but sharp. "Screw that. Screw all the poetic shit you have just tried to suffocate me with." She witheringly glares back, receiving his vocal whippings with a stony face. "I have been shot at, savagely bitten which infected me with lycanthropy of all things, hunted down, given a concussion, kidnaped twice." 

He sucks in the stale, smelly air to keep trucking on with the list. "I have gone through half the agonizing werewolf transformation, ejected with an unknown substance to stop it, have had blood drawn from me, you run in like a some," Eyes shining with finally unearthed wisdom of the events around him he stutters for the adjective, "some surreal woman-shaped crow and set me free, to have you kiss my very breath from my lungs, and expand my heart to the size of the moon, and when you get right down to it . . ." The bite to his tone dissipates, only leaving behind the audible depths of his love. "I've experienced those wacko situations to just stand here, in the middle of a disgusting tunnel, to hear you tell me . . .

"All those trials were for nothing? My worthy love for you meaningless? You to be taken from me before the night is over, the other way around, or both of us dead?"

Selene calculates what has just transpired with pools of ineffable dejection, and an expression that would make a ruthless warlord cry. *If only your hope could be broken so I may have a piece,* she fretfully ponders, *for if you knew Viktor as I do, you'd be as leery of our time left as I.* Michael puffs up his chest; his own eyes reckless with polished hope. *All odds are not in our favor,* he admits to himself, *but at least if we die tonight, at least, at least . . . oh hell, let us not, dear God, let us not.* 

"Hey, nuh uh. I am done playing the little lost American." He courageously continues. "We will get out of here, alive and well," Dauntlessly, he draws her to him like a scene from a Dracula movie, when Drac has his victim in thrall and is lunging for the kill. He presses a short and rough kiss to her pale rosy lips, and pulls back to huskily say, "not counting inevitable minor scrapes and bruises."

Selene deviously smiles while licking her razor fangs as a hungry lioness. "Spunky. Another element of you, I like."

Suddenly--a harsh "Duck!" is shouted, a startled feminine scream unleashed, gunshot rounds are fired, an equally startled roar, feet go jetting down the left tunnel, and in the grisly aftermath, a werewolf lies dying at the intersection, while Selene limp-runs on a gashed left leg, with Michael holding up her left side, as they flee from the scene of the surprise attack. 

Ambling along down the pathway, only because of Selene's wounded leg, not because they want to take in the gruesome sights, they bathe through ankle deep murky water (in which bloated bodies float, and blood is tinting it murkier); the source of the flood is a busted sewage pipe over head at the far corner past a rickety appearing catwalk, they assume, was pierced open by a stray bullet. Up to the right of them, they see a small dingy metal staircase slanting up to a side bedraggled door in the wall. 

Mentally shrugging, Michael thinks, *Why not?* 

He steers their slow but steady course across the open square room to the stairs, and even more slowly up the stairs. Both are breathing laboriously, bodies edging closer to exhaustion by the nights never ending roller coaster events. Selene attempts to stifle grimaces as she moves with her torn open left thigh, which was bleeding profoundly, and now is just trickling at the strenuous movements she's forcing it through. 

"Where, and what do you want to do after we get out of this hell hole?" Michael optimistically inquires, tone heartily beseeching and full of forced casualty, eyes flinching away from the monstrosity around him, ears attempting to deter the battle noises coming from the other tunnels.

His paramour allows the silence to envelope, (still sniffing the air and scanning the tunnel openings for any paramount danger, always on strict alert) then in a sudden thoughtful outburst, just as wistfully answers-shrugging into his optimistic thinking just for his sake, and her own. "Michael, let us say we escape this battlefield unscathed, and that this is the big end game between our species . . ." Her heavy pause implants an escalating, red-hot desire for her next words inside of him, producing a need for them as a junkie throbs for a fix, so when she continues in a tissue paper thin voice with ardent love, he mentally breaths a sigh of relief. "Now saying that, I frankly do not care where we venture, as long as I am with you."

They stop their feet movement up the stairs, eyes connecting for a brief half-second. Silent knowledge of immense caliber is shared through the gesture, and abruptly accompanied by his whispered invocation of:

"Forever."

The deal is sealed, but still, the hands of chance could burn the contract, signatures, and all in a gleeful wink.

*Will we this truly be a fairy tale ending?* her lycan frightfully ponders. *Will the guy get the girl and live happily ever after, with a fuck off barrier to all forces against them? Will it be that, or a horror fan's wet dream?* 

*And once I thought I wanted a life of action, but hey, this package does come with great co-star.* 

Simultaneously, his vampire thinks: *We are alone. Our only defenses, ourselves. Our only cause, love. If we survive this night, will we make tomorrow, the next day, the next day, and so forth? The hunt will be on for our heads. But to truly feel again . . .*

Their lips hover closer for a desperate kiss. It is bursting with hope and love, but if you scrap her nails across that flimsy film, it is also gorged with their pressing qualms and black hate and grief for things past and things now and things future. They both conclude the kiss by pulling away in festive bewilderment of the sensation that is summoned: the sensation of giving all and receiving all. No, it is not new to them just it had remained untouched for so long; it is like a machine consumed with flecks of rust, dilapidated from disuse, blanketed from the world, and slipped away in that place which can not be named for you never remember its name, location, or its contents, and now, somehow, in someway, its coordinates have unearthed, the generator for it has been revved on, the joints oiled, the whole damn machine spit shined to a perfect clean. 

Oh, to love and be loved; even if the love seems doomed as a bird thrown in the air with no wings.

Selene is young again, in the mental sense anyway, reliving farfetched but actual events that she once was in when she was but a human of thirteen. Something she has never done in her entire vampire existence. She is a thirteen human again-hugging her mother in a primitive kitchen of that ancient time-running through an apple orchard with her two cousins, dropping matured red apples from their aprons along the way-tending the animals with her smiling father in the barn-giving all and receiving all. Chunks of humanity, that have long been displaced and rotted, begin to shine through the haze of the ferociously animalistic vampire side that lurks within her. 

Michael is pleasantly warm, not just outwardly, but internally warm. Every cell is buzzing from this feeling. A feeling he has not sunk himself inside of since Samantha became a member of a graveyard. Ah, Samantha, a love lost but remembered, and now replaced. That is how it is. That is the way of the human heart. He grips these statements with all the might of his mind, and accepts them as someone accepts a new teacher who is not better or worse than the first, just simply new.

Believing in the truth that you really are loved and you really love them back . . . it internally throws open the doors of excellent possibilities. Your perception of time is distorted, turning seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, years into eternity. And luckily, this is all happening to them, for they do not know if they have minutes or days left to live, left with each other. 

Every moment counts. 

Selene chokes out a strangled groan of pain from the excruciating climb. They have resumed their trek up the stairs, and have reached the top, clenching each other like life lines. *So far our path has had very little hostility,* she thinks, *let it stay that way . . . at least until my wound properly closes.* 

"Let me take a look at that." Michael scratches out, eyeballing the wound with trepidation, still kind of shaken from his second encounter with a bonafide werewolf, but feeling a bit better from her sincere speech, and of course the tepid female body compressed against his.

Selene sucks it up, smoothing away the lines of affliction on her face, but not quite deleting it from her eyes or her snapping voice. "I'll be fine."

*Yeah, sure,* he sarcastically thinks, *super vampire healing or not, I have yet to see it, so I won't believe it. When it comes to you, I'm definitely not taking any chances.*

"Last time you said that we ended up in a car crash." He swiftly recalls with traumatizing clarity. "I dragged you from the bottom of the river with me," His grip becomes taut around her mid-section, and he darts his eyes below the summit of the stairs, down at the slightly rippling tarnished water, which makes it all to easy to imagine it as the vile river's depths, "swam us straight to the nearest shore, almost drowning us both in the process." 

She watches him and listens attentively to the tale, gawking at his expressive face now swivelled back to hers. "You were out cold. And, well," He lightly shrugs. "I had to do something. The doctor in me manned my controls and there I was slamming my fists down onto you, giving you full fledged CPR, fucking determined to not let you die on me . . .

"I scarcely knew you, I still don't even know you now, but I did it anyway."

His eyes convey to her that it does not matter, there will be time for everything if you hold on to the belief, and they also adorn her with a dense protective blanket, promising that within his power he will allow no harm to befall her splendid person.

Her tone is stern and all together honest. "This time Michael, I will be fine. This superficial flesh wound will heal in a matter of minutes or so." 

And she is correct, the laceration on her left thigh has already knitted itself back together. To his scrutinizing eyes the horrid paw slices are barely noticeable, for they are now pinkish lines, sporting half crusted, and half mid-crusted blood through the torn leather. *Still hurts like hell, though,* she silently adds to herself, *but I've received worse. These kitty cat scratches are nothing.*

"Good to know." Michael honestly mummers, then after a moment or two, naively adds to himself: *We will both be fine . . .*

BOOM! 

The rusted door opens to the generator room, slamming against the concrete wall. Out of the darkened room a gun muzzle appears and is aimed point blank at Michael's upper chest, the trigger frenetically wrenched, a blink of light scalds the trio's eyes, the deafening noise of a pistol gone off slams into their ears, whooshing out of the gun a lethal bullet of silver nitrate sleekly rams through flesh and muscle to disperse directly into his blood stream; delivering its deadly poison to every part of his body . . . 

For a second, time almost stops it seems so slow, eerie silence roars in their ears like a waterfall, everyone remains spellbound, not a limb is moved, then a sound creeps back into their ears. It is the sound of all their breathing magnified tenfold, every deep inhale and long exhale, next, slowly, oh so slowly, expressions settle onto their faces . . . 

Selene and Michael are within the throes of absolute shock, while the gore and mud caked gunman dons a triumphant smirk . . . 

All eyes probe the wound. It begins to lethargically leak the metallic liquid. Selene's eyes widen with indescribable panic, her heartbeat skipping, and face becoming a whiter shade of pale. Kraven raises the gun to blow away its streaming smoke in self-satisfaction, feeling the jealousy for Michael's place in Selene's heart vanquished. A gurgle of blood spouts from Michael's mouth, descending to the floor in ruby droplets; his lips are now swathed crimson, and some left over blood oozes from the sides. As he releases a jerky gasp, and locks his stunned and woeful pale brown eyes to Selene's mirroring orbs, Michael's abused body plummets to the ground with a sickening thud! that has just branded her for eternity . . .

Time surges back into its normal course. 

Voices are rendered.

Movement is possible.


	3. Horror in Purity

(it was snatched in the night

like a firefly in mid flutter

gone as if it was never there

engage in the battle

to avenge and justify

the atrocity that stole 

your brilliant flame

and gave you ice)

- By VaRuka

  
  
  
  


.Horror in Purity.

  
  
  
  


"Michael!" Selene exuberantly shrieks, voice brimming over with celestial loss and love for this one lycan, and then buckles down right beside his fallen figure. 

*Not now, not now, not now,* she rants and raves, *not now when we promised to live! We fucking promised each other that, that . . . that we would live . . . live Michael, Michael!*

Instantly, his body starts to churn, lurching off the floor, and twitching to his sides, rocking, rocking, rocking, as the allergic lycan fails in the futile battle against the liquid silver dominating his veins. Exquisite jagged groans are yanked from his throat like a porcupine from its burrow, while his craggy breathing escalates into a blur of procession, dilated inhuman cobalt-blue eyes stare dead on at the dirty cracked ceiling, conveying his red-hot pain and monstrous wolf yelping within . . . and alas, the most horrid symptom of them all detonates--his once normal, barely visible blue veins begin to swell and earnestly strain under his skin, ghastly becoming coarse cords of throbbing silver ropes.

The atrocious silver in him burns like a fire he can not put out, that is burning away his soul from his body, persuading his insides a crispy black, eating away at his body as a Piranha to a piece of fresh juicy meat, and there is nothing, nothing what so ever, he can do about it.

She gazes on with bloody tears drowning her eyes, spilling over to softly strike Michael's sweaty cheek. *Selene . . . I spoke . . . to soon, way too, too . . . soon,* he incoherently babbles. Their eyes make contact once more, for the briefest moment in her long life, and then . . . his smoothly close, all his energy depleted, body slinking into a comatose state; so impenetrable, so quiet, and dying.

A tortured sob escapes Selene. This is her at her weakest point. All her hope is extinguished, that match once blazing bright within her confines is doused with a bucket of cold veracity. Picture the Great Wall of China suddenly, without a forebode, crumbling into insubstantial dust, and you will comprehend the physical and emotional drain she is enduring.

"Get away from him." Kraven harshly spits. "You, Selene, are coming with me." He bends down and leeches his grip upon her, digging his nails into her leather encased arm.

She sharply flings a heated glare onto Kraven, eyes vacant of their usual chocolate color, now totally consumed by a moon hued ring around her pupils and hissing like a rabid feline through her gleaming fangs.

"I can not wait to observe Viktor tear you into bloody shreds as if you were a piece of flimsy paper." She imbeds her words deep into his brain, so lathered are they with vexation, he can not help but take them to heart.

At the thought of Viktor, hysteria seizes his eyes, blood running cold, palms becoming clammy.

He shakes his head for clarity, reigning in his bloated fear of Viktor.

Kraven lashes back at Selene, jealously again manifesting, now larger though, but more thin because of the ludicrous circumstances. "All because of this lycan," He puts as much distaste as he can in that one word, referring to Michael's fainted figure, "you dare wish these curses upon me?! He has warped your mind, Selene. You should never fully trust a lycan, to do so labels you a guidable twit." He trembles with hardly bottled fury. "And you fancy him, too! Well, I fancy him dead." 

His remorseless words invoke thoughts of the hatred-filled Selene that was alive not but a day or two ago. That Selene was also infected with the disease called hate, she was infected to the brink of where she figured she'd never, ever return. How wrong, how sincerely wrong. She ate, slept, and breathed hate for every lycan. It was as overt as her breath on a frigid winter day. But then, Michael had to come along, and ruin everything, giving everything. 

Her stable belief system went poof, disturbing questions arose, plaguing feelings birthed and bloomed and shone so luminous that she could not hide in the dark from these factors anymore. Embracing it she found, she found, oh she found, the impossible possible. And now . . . Kraven with the experimental silver nitrate pistol had to just come along and blow it all to hell. 

Ending his speech he sneers at Michael, then directs his psycho beady eyes to her:

"As every damn lycan should be."

She opens her mouth to retaliate, but is urgently hushed as Kraven snares the podium once more from having known a secret forever hidden, until now. This secret, artfully cloaked from the world and her sensitive ears, will affect Selene like a stake through her immortal heart, and it will force the little sane and steady part of her to die in a burst of orange flame.

"Ah, yes! You had invoked Viktor's name, for you it is basically like wailing daddy. Well, your daddy did an un-fatherly act one dark night in your neck of the woods . . . when you were but a mere human." She narrows her eyes, undiluted rage at him bringing up that nightmarish event thrashing inside her. Kraven crazily smirks; insanity his only friend. "He could never follow his own rules. No, no, no! No cattle blood for him. He yearned for pure human blood to quench his thirst . . . So, on that faithful night he swept through your family, gobbling them up as if you all were a special feast laid out in your beds for him, and only him."

She shrilly gasps. 

"You--" 

"Lie?" Kraven inquires, cutting her sentence off, eyes twinkling with delight at her apparent unease. "Why the hell would I need to when the truth is so much more excruciating, so much more horrifying? Selene, he murdered your family, found you, and decided to keep you as a substitute daughter, effectively replacing the one he fed to the sun." Selene falls into a void where her senses are fizzled to nothing, where her mind is slower than sliding molasses, and a feeling of a little girl lost in a tall forest is fusing with anger so hot that all she sees is red. "He did it, Selene! Not the lycans! Viktor himself causes you your nightmares and eternal loss!"

A beat. Selene inhales a shuddering breath, maintaining her fragile control . . . but for how long? 

Kraven frantically runs a hand through his hair, smirk still firmly in place, and gestures to an exit, eyes empty of coherence. "Now, come to your new master. You belong with me. By my side."

Her control snaps.


	4. Rise to Fall, Fall to Rise

Author's Note: To comment on a reviews review: I did read the novelization of Underworld for I own a copy of the splendid book. Bought it one day as a whim at the mall from Walden's Book Store before I even saw the movie. After reading the book the movie didn't quite shine as expected. But hey, I'm going to buy it. Hopefully, you don't think my version is a trifle too like the book or movie . . . That would just suck. But anyway, it was a good book, don't you think? 

______________________________________________________________________________

  
  
  
  


(wish for solace

as you wish for time

wish for acceptance

you will never find

rebel til your heart bleeds

til no more blood can be bleed

til the fight is out of you

and you are better off dead)

- By VaRuka

.Rise to Fall, Fall to Rise. 

  
  
  
  


Lunging as a pouncing lioness onto its pitiful prey, she raises her left arm and in mid-air with lightening quick accuracy slices her claws down upon Kraven's unsuspecting features; touching the ground smoothly with her back to him, breathing in growls, and lips stretched back in a snarl to bare her fangs. He stands there furiously petrified, catching his flowing blood that is raining from his face in the palm of his shaky hand, licking the drops cascading past his lips, affliction tingling his nerves.

And Selene is not done. Her retribution for Michael and for the horrendous secret unearthed from its ancient burial grounds is fueling her onto tearing him to bloody shreds before Viktor even lays a finger on him. She is quite stubborn in the belief that when Viktor discovers Kraven, he will be dead in the lycans' lair, a mush of bones, blood, and utter gore--reducing him to the lycans' next meal when they stumble upon his remains.

Acrobatically flipping backwards into a perfectly balanced hand stand, she brutally winds her legs around his pale throat, achieving the desired death grip, and with all her vampiric reserves of strength, hurls him over with her before his mind can even calculate her liquid actions.

BAM!

Kraven's body connects with the parlous concrete floor, gun sliding from his grip, bones becoming fragmented, internal organs liberally bleeding, producing blood like a waterfall to withdraw from his mouth and nose, and his back is now black and blue, not to mention his head received a very good thwack. He lies there disoriented; seeing iridescent yellow stars against a stark black background, groaning from the nasty impact. 

Selene settles on top of his barely breathing chest, powerful legs still coiled around his throat, whole body arching over his face, lengthy, treacherous, knifelike, and swift feline claws just scratching, scratching, ripping, tearing, rupturing, digging, supreme mutilating, into his once handsome face; etching her own designs of hatred here, there, positively everywhere, as his guttural screams and hisses burn into her memory.

Considering his lacerations, in this battle Selene will win, but considering his species: vampire, and age: over 400, then Selene only has the upper hand for now, and maybe not for much longer. 

It's 50/50.

Just like this war.

Exactly like life.

With all the stamina Kraven can muster, he draws back his arms then lets them fly into Selene's unguarded stomach, vehemently thrusting her body onto the concrete wall opposite of the door. Overtly startled by the unseen move, she flails, crashes, and sinks to the floor like a sunken ship after two many chats with cannon balls, blood relinquishing from her body through her pale rosy lips, which she hastily licks up before it spills onto the floor.

*Waste not,* she randomly thinks.

Thickly coughing, Kraven wobbly stands on his feet, rakes dirty hands through his equally dirty locks, and straightens his fluctuating equilibrium. Soon, instantly--hands flee to his face, blindly groping his grisly features for familiarity, and finding very little, almost none. He stands there as something that had been rotting in a grave, crawled up, and decided to try life on again, but forgot one detail, the decayed, gruesome, smelly, countenance that it grew while sleeping with death. Broken down into elementary terms: this guy looks ugly, but may have once been pretty. 

"You still," His breath is as ragged as a mountain's terrain, torn and bloody lips averting his words from sounding as eloquently spoken as they were before, "continue to defy me! You insolent, foolish bitch!"

The magnitude of his deformed curses vibrates throughout the tunnels, piercing even the darkest corners, even the most obstreperous rooms, turning vampiric and lycan ears alike, imploring the climatic war to slink over into their little hideout, and thus . . . it begins to ominously, slowly, unintentionally, swarm. 

Back in the room Selene, Kraven, and Michael are currently occupying, Selene is locking her malice consumed eyes with Kraven's slashed and smashed in delirious ones. The tension is getting tangible. Breaths are shallowly inhaled and dramatically exhaled. Both are using their last reserves of energy. Both are edging along the line of hysteria--oops, Kraven is already their. Only with wit can Selene put the final nail in his coffin.

*But in my state of depression, rage, and exhaustion . . .* she urgently ponders; *can I smoothly pull this magician's trick off?* 

Timidly, while attempting to regain her own equilibrium, she rises from the ground as a fiery Phoenix, eyes shrouded in perseverance, body softly quaking, breath as serrate as Kraven's, mind reeling, tumbling, then sitting still as a video gamer at their console; deeply in concentration so they can beat the game. 

"Bitch? I, am a bitch?" She humorlessly snorts, appearing very cocky, and wipes her hand across the body of her bleeding nose, catching the blood to lick it right off. "Maybe I am, but you are even worse. You are a disgrace, an abomination, an unacceptable shame on the entire vampire race. You need to be put down like a old dog."

She lunges with her superhuman abilities in full gear, shoving it from one, to two, to three, then jerking it into four; she performs a adequate roundhouse kick upon his body, one foot after the other making contact, akin to mercilessly stomping across his face from mid-air. 

Turned towards him she lithely lands, and spits out, "You are nothing." Immediately, as he is still reeling from her applaud worthy roundhouse; she begins a fierce assault of multiple kicks to his already affronted body. Left leg, right leg. "Nothing! " Left leg, "but a narcissistic," Right leg, "minuscule," Left leg, "bastard." Left leg, right le-

He slyly captures her leg in his 400-year-old hands, powerful 400-year-old hands, and gives a hearty twist, something you may call bone crunching even.

Selene's facade flashes panic and a moan of torment is released, ascending her from the ground--with a sharp light-switch click her twin Berettas emerge from their holsters around her waist, and as darts soar to a dartboard her sleek silver bullets are shot, as she spirals to the left, regressing with each spin of her body, and then . . . she deftly lands on her feet, crouched and spasmodically hissing as an inflamed cat who just got sprinkled with water. 

Kraven withers, ducks, and aspires to dodge most, if not all her feistily spitting bullets, but they prevail, tearing through his messy clothes and through his snowy flesh, completely entering his form, feeling like tiny fireballs packing a reservoir of forest fires. Sadly though, he is not a lycan, or he'd be dead for sure from the critical intake. He jolts back from the encounters, whole body malevolently contorted in pain and rage, fangs displayed, hissing like a lunatic, eyes clear of color except for the pupil and a dazzling moon hued ring.

Satisfaction caresses her mind. And then, her guns stop spewing, though her fingers keep yanking at the triggers. Obviously, her ammunition has been squandered on Kraven. Cursing inwardly, she extends her arms behind her for two new magazines as a skilled military soldier in the mists of a full fledged war with no time to spare for mistakes.

CLICK! CLICK!

Locked and reloaded Selene glances up, eyes widening at the view of Kraven nimbly barreling over and gruffly knocking her precious guns out of her sweaty hands, sending them clattering across the floor, streams of acidic smoke billowing in their wake.

Weaponless to weaponless, ineffably weary, bagged by hatred, they leap, they clash.

By hand to hand combat, they callously grapple, moving like updated shadow ninjas. So fast paced that it could never be written down, it could never be video taped, for they are but black blurs, amongst a unstable, filthy background which abates into something minor once you lay eyes on their supernatural figures, intent and swallowed by their fight to the death. 

Taking a blow to the head, Selene gravitates to the floor in a mournful motion, eyes dazed and hazy. Upon hitting the floor she rapidly skids over to Michael. She gazes over at her beloved and his pallid complexion, utterly defenseless state, and barely rising chest with howling horror. Kraven could easily massacre Michael in front of her, leaving her with pieces of her Michael instead of a whole, leaving her hollow inside, and yearning for the rays of the sun. 

As if she already isn't. She is not slow, dumb, or any of those derogatory titles. Oh, she knows he is going to die; he is probably a fine hair away from it as Kraven proudly stalks over to her. Only a fine, fine hair away.

Creeping along the floor as a devious slug . . . leaving behind a mixture of rich red and shiny silver residue from when Kraven shot him, Lucian crawls along, moving slow, but precise, breath short and craggy, throbbing veins bulging as silver ropes, bearded face absolutely ashen, death gnawing and barking at his heels . . . he pitifully moves, and moves closer to Kraven.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. No Red Tape

(Tabooed desire

lights your world afire

so what of the consequence

and of its celestial relevance 

be it all or half

good or bad

it really just depends on

the eyes you're peering through

when you look

upon its spawn)

- By VaRuka

  
  
  
  


.No Red Tape.

  
  
  
  


"Selene . . ." Kraven fervidly whispers. "What do you have to say for yourself, you little lost nosferatu, you little nothing?"

Selene tunes out Kraven's daft words while snagging eye contact with the stealthily approaching Lucian, and they speedily convey impertinent messages and feelings. 

"Exactly what he does." She huskily breaths, donning a confident grin, and staring up at Kraven's repulsing, distorted face; taking some pride in the fact it was from his fury and her wicked craftsmanship.

The metallic sound of a blade unsheathing from Lucian's sleeve enters all their ears. As if time itself is gradually freezing for this sequence of events to take place, seemingly, so gradually, Kraven whirls around to spot Lucian just as he jams that baleful blade into and fully through Kraven's leg. Then Lucian languidly bends it, effectively snapping the blade from the hidden spring and getting it certifiably fortified, all the while staring straight into Kraven's bloodshot eyes and shocked expression. Selene watches the scene unfold with internal radiant delight echoing to her timeless features.

Kraven roars. Lucian rasps out a chuckle.

"Told you," He languidly sucks in a shaky breath, and then chuckles again, "you would have to bleed, as I once bled for you . . ." Lucian utters so quietly, so menacingly, and so happily.

Buckling to the ground Kraven's eyes glare honed daggers into Lucian's already dying body, and he falls, and he falls, and he hits the floor as a fainted race horse. 

The world returns to normal time. 

Selene bursts into tears, small feminine sobs flowing forth, arms clutching her dear Michael to her, cheek pressing against his in a loving gesture. There is nothing for her to do but this now that immediate danger has past. She will willingly wait for Viktor to come and slaughter them both, for what else is there for her in this world, if not for Michael and their new love together?

Okay, let us say she flees right now, leaves behind the atrocities in the underworld, takes the next flight to Ohio, integrates her self with humanity, and lives out her dark life with . . . what? A pet? Another silver Jaguar? Ooh and a condo? No. She rather die with her beloved, knowing at least, they would die along side each other, and she wouldn't have to live on bearing the depression of Michael's death on her back.

So she cradles him and cries.

Lucian stares on at their intimate contact and at her sincere tears. He listens with an attentive ear at her languished sobs and cooed promises of love. And with all these factors he is mentally transferred back to the rich past where his gorgeous and gentle Sonja once whispered the same sentiments into his own beseeching ears.

Oh, how the past perpetually repeats itself . . . as if this is all one big movie, and God keeps rewinding the tape to watch his favorite parts and just dashes in some new characters with the old, like one universe sized pot of gumbo being stirred to mix the old with the new, the new with the old. 

*Sick, twisted, and . . .* His thought derails from oppressing sympathy.

Lucian cracked lips part, celestial words are briskly spoken:

"Bite him."

Selene swivels her head to the promptly forgotten and promptly remembered presence of Lucian. *Is he serious?* she contemplates. *He can not be. It would be fatal, completely fatal to Michael, my poor Michael.* Her eyes narrow to perplexed slits. Mind tumbling through fields of explanations for why Lucian just said what he said. He gives her such an amply grim expression, such an eyeful of warm devoutness that she can not help but cleanly mop it within her confines, and let it lay out her next impertinent action. 

"Bite him." She delicately reaffirms, drilling her own somber gaze right back at his nodding figure. "Give Michael the leeching kiss of a vampire . . ." There is an overt doubt in her voice. "Why Lucian, most ruthless ruler of the lycan horde, should I comply with your inane instructions? You could be setting me up to further along Michael's unwelcome demise." 

"His blood," With each word his mouth seeps his own sacred blood to grace the dirty floor; with each second he loses another thinning strand of life, and it shows in his waning voice, "can absorb both our bites. His blood, his blood," A hacking cough churns his mouth into a spray can, exiling splatters of sticky blood to graffiti the floor, "dear vampire, his blood is the key to a revolution, the key to combining both our worlds in one humanoid body, his blood is the crimson glue, dear Selene, I know, I know more than you will ever contrive . . . about the love, the loss, and Viktor's fog of hate, of ignorance, of fear . . ." 

His foundation in this world shakes, rumbles, growls, and it is a sight she dare not want to witness, it is a type of death she has never laid her eye upon and it is not a pretty display, it is not clean and swift, it slower than a still life portrait, and each stroke of pain he receives is flashed across his everything, flashed in gruesome contortions, flashed in his vocal moans. She shudders while watching with morbid fascination and pity. 

"Bite him!" Lucian stringently whispers, horridly spraying more blood, and she hears an audible squishing sound from his labored breathing. "Before he is as five feet in the grave as me, and definitely before he is six! Now do it."

Selene casts the ailing lycan a dawning look as if a light bulb just flickered on and her brain is not shrouded in darkness anymore, and then she casts the ailing lycan under her a look of despair and hunger, livid despair and absolute hunger.

"Do it." He commands once more.

The throbbing silver jugular vein beckons with sultry beats, and promises of the blood that flows inside. *Should I? Should I really take this dire risk?* she deeply ponders, *Ooh, but to deny myself this forbidden desire in this opportune moment, well . . .* She lowers her salivating mouth downward, pointed fangs zeroing in on Michael's sweaty neck, on the enthralling vein beneath. Her eyes are luminous in the dim room, her flesh feels as if spiders are crawling up and down it, and her thoughts have become wisps of smoke, obscuring right from wrong, and life from death. 

"Do it." He repeats with the last of his vigor.

Her fangs strike as a python's to a provoking animal, penetrating his flesh as if it were nothing but lukewarm butter, and incising his jugular vein to draw forth neoteric blood for her ravenous ingestion. 

And so the contamination ensues. 

"Save his--" Lucian starts . . . right before, in an action too precise, Kraven who has fragilely risen from the floor, leans down to yank Lucian up and fling him across the decrepit room, producing the sound of blood painting the confines, and bones shattering like Cinnamon Toast Crunch in a person's mouth. 

"Ah, you filthy lycan, trying to pull the rug from under me! You are nothing!! NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING!" Kraven bellows, eyes empty, awfully empty of much, wild gestures with his arms projecting blind fury of a raving lunatic. "I am something, you lycan fuck! I am the great Kraven who killed Lucian, who rules in Viktor's place! And I should be an Elder!" In a lightening movement he retrieves his stolen silver nitrate gun and begins to desolate all the special bullets in the magazine into the already dying Lucian. "I should be ruler of all!" BLAM! BLAM! "I should!" BLAM! "I am SOMETHING!" BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! "SOMETHING!"

He clicks upon a vacant magazine. 

Lucian, the infamous lycan leader, is now dead and gone. He has officially kicked the bucket; killed by Kraven, for real, without lies, in cold-blood, in a fit of spilling rage. Kraven should feel justified, exuberant, so utterly happy, but he feels like his gun--empty, smoky, and frigid. 

"Selene . . ." Kraven childishly whispers, rearing his head in her direction. "Selene, my love." He gawks at the sight before him as if it could not be happening; his voice escalates to a climax; building, building, to explode. "Selene, what the hell are you doing!?"

She is experiencing colossal gratification from a cultural vampiric act that has been long abjured from the vampire world, abjured for so long that the first few pulls of Michael's scalding blood has got her head spinning and reeling and thrashing and blasting itself into a million particles floating all around as joyously thrown confetti. Her primal side, the side that does not require thought but untainted instinct, overrides any tiny part left of her human persona. So she savagely bites down harder, sure enough to tear the holes wider, clutches and jerks his comatose body even closer. 

She liberally tastes him, all the while secreting the vampire virus that dominates her veins, which begins to become instantly absorbed and overrun the body, like poison in a rattle snake's fangs; a pull of his, a pause to discharge the virus, a pull of his, a pause to discharge the virus, a vast swallow of his blood to flood and warm her insides, and then a longer pause to unload a bigger dose of her deadly virus.

It is quite evident the solace she is redeeming. And it is quite evident that she is not giving one single thought to the abominating act she is doing, to the creature she is creating, the new species . . . is all does not matter as she is caressed by such joy. 

Sounding to her ears as a faint and faraway whisper, Kraven hastily mutters, right before dashing down back the way he came:

"Bugger this."


	6. The Veils Have Blown Away

(when in doubt: confront

when in a confrontation: be blunt

when being blunt: be vicious

then the other conversationalist

will do nothing but confess

expect radical results

and a mess)

- By VaRuka

  
  
  
  


.The Veils Have Blown Away.

  
  
  
  


Suddenly, out of the fog of her awareness a hand, a very forceful hand rips her and Michael at the seams, effectively severing their intimate connection (oh, she feels the sudden loss like a sting of a blade to her flesh), and thus flings her across the room, body obscenely banging into the nearby generator to nastily slink down, sprawling out on the floor. Completely off-balance and now sharply plummeting from her high and into tolerable but serious pain, her eyes lock on a fuzzy male form, ears ring as if there are mini bells jingling in them both. Her brain attempts to make sense of the sudden movements, blurry pictures, and loss of Michael's delicious blood and warmth. 

"Where is Kraven!?" The figure demandingly bellows in a tone that will not take an insubstantial answer, while scrutinizing the room with its eyes, and taking heed of Michael's pitiful agony and blooming rosy blood from his two puncture lacerations, along with Lucian's decaying body, and the blood, the guns; all the signs of battle.

He sniffs the air; configuring to himself all the inhabitants that have populated the room, even if they've come and gone.

Selene blinks a couple of times, vigorously trying to put her mental puzzle pieces back in their places so she may at least discern the colorful outline before her. With unstable limbs she reasserts herself on two feet, eyes coming into healthy focus, and finally she obtains who the fury-filled outline is . . .

*Viktor,* she dauntlessly identifies. 

"Well, what have you to say for yourself, my child?" Viktor's full attention is on her, terribly cold eyes assessing her completely; twin sparks of malice and disappointment blazing within them.

Now in complete control of her battered body, she slides a loving gaze onto Michael, checking to see if there are any spontaneous results, changes, any reactions at all, then contemptuously flickers her eyes back onto Viktor, her gaze now stony and equally cold.

Viktor continues with his vituperative ravings. "You have let Kraven escape your grasp, and you have tasted the blood of that filthy lycan, Michael . . . Oh, the world becomes a ghastly place when a vampire dares enjoy the tarnished pleasure of a lycan; when you, my prized Selene, look upon the face of the enemy with something much less than animosity."

She is frozen in hatred for her surrogate father, the one who butchered her family as if it was all in a days work to feed his frivolous whims, who is now looming over her as if he is the one true god. *God he was to me, in my once ignorant eyes,* she internally admits, *but god he is no longer, for he has been revealed to be nothing but a egotistical, ignorant, and scared old bastard, and needless to say, one big hypocritical maniac.* 

"Well, well what have you to say!?"

Though extremely cultured, and having attended remarkably sophisticated schools in her early vampire years before becoming a kick-ass Death Dealer, and even well disciplined from years of special martial arts, yoga, firearm, covert operations, and etc. training, all she has to say for herself are two notably uncouth words:

"Fuck you." 

In a fit of whirling rage, Viktor draws his magnificent sword, grips it with two enormously strong hands, and swiftly descends one of the dire blades right to the accurate middle of her skull, right between her very eyes, and as keenly and rapidly as the action was made . . . it halts seconds before the fatal slice in and through her hostile being.

"Right now, Selene, you try my patience!" The sword still is poised in a baleful manner as he inhales a cavernous breath. "I discover you with your fangs inside a despicable lycan, Lucian's silver riddled corpse, with Kraven's scent floating about the air, and you have the audacity to, to, to . . ." His rage is so great that his mind can not focus on nothing but the lava-anger boiling inside of him, but alas, some time later in front of Selene's accusing eyes he shouts, "Oh, such sacrilege to your sire!"

A pinching pause . . .

"You are in a sticky situation, my dear." He conspiratorially proclaims, calmer to the point of unsettlement, leaning closer to her sully figure. "It would be for the best if you explain the whereabouts of Kraven and why . . . you were doing what you were . . . to that lycan, for I do not want you kill you Selene, you mean too much to me for such a task to be besmirched upon you."

He intensely smacks his crinkled small lips, while swiveling his head to the side in a mockery of how a real sorry is to be delivered to someone. 

Then, his elderly voice strums up again, those frigid eyes so cold as twin ice cubes bore into her once more. "But I will do it. If push comes to shove, I will." 

*I will not be his lackey any longer, cower in fear as his dutiful servant, and be his substitute daughter,* Selene vehemently ponders. *It is time for him to come to understand that as low as I am, he is still miles under me, in a place I never want to take a tour of.* 

"I have no doubt about what you have just threatened! I believe it for every ray the moon exudes." With as much aplomb she can muster, she removes her wounded and teetering, but still wile body from off the floor, and to her feet. "And do you, Viktor, foresee that not a bone in my body could give a bloody damn right now about what you bluster and require!" She pads a foot forward, then another. "Bloody hell, Viktor! You and your deceitful tales of how a pack of lycans ravaged my family, how the lycans started the war, and how valiant and kind and sound you are!" She pauses to lick her chops in satisfaction, reigning her voice into some type of serenity. "How artful you are, keeping secrets from the whole clan, especially me, the one you view as your own daughter."

"Silence!" The word rings about the room in a most rapine tone.

Selene does not heed the command, she but gives a seething smile, and a short pause before continuing. "I am sensing that you can not take my sarcasm."

He sharply inhales as his eyes extremely widen, to extremely narrow as he indolently exhales, "Ah . . ." 

Then the oldest vampire alive glances away from her regal posture and the anti-loving eyes he is not used to attaining.

Doing the old man shuffle over to Michael's quavering comatose form, Viktor wistfully speaks:

"I took from you--your life, your adored family, your humanity . . ." He innocently gawks at pitiful Michael, and begins squatting before him to Selene's growing trepidation. "But I gave you more than that flimsy human life--eternity, my priceless love, a grand home in a supreme coven, unimaginable power in your blood, limbs, and mind. I made you . . . so beautiful, beautiful in every fraction . . . 

"And this is how you repay me, childe? By consorting with the adversary? Tasting his blood? Fulfilling the blasphemy that lycan scientist spoke of?"

A clap of a gaze is thrown her way, along with liberally quick words filled with undiluted passion:

"I will not allow this union!"

And with that proclaimed, he focuses all attention on Michael, barbarously lifting him, shaking him, and thrusting him right through the five inch thick cement wall leading to the vast, flooding open room beyond. The actions are performed so speedy, and so deft, that Selene watches them in wonder of the other vampire's skill, and in great sorrow over her beloved's vile treatment. The last emotion prods something inside which can not be subdued, something that she does not even want subdued.

She ominously hisses, spaciously publishing her fangs, eyes eerily flashing with virulent emotions, claws spasmodically flexing, muscles still, so still, tense, alert, and as a frog leaps from pad to pad her whole body flows into the air, aiming for Viktor in a most liable way, as a most inhuman being could. 

With his back continually turned, eyes not even on her supernatural form, he merely whips out his arm in her direction, and his bony white fingers clasp around her gauzy neck, condensing with half his might, to tease of his strength, and warn her of his legitimate proclamations. She is jolted from furious to something that to this day remains untitled, but it sure packs a punch, just as surely as her angled kick to his . . . 

"Arrrg!!" Is the piercing cry that slithers from the lips of Viktor, right before he releases Selene with a jerky unclench to rashly hold his groin. 

She lithely lands on her stable feet, smirk brightening the room with her satisfaction, eyes twinkling lovely against the dim oscillating lights, and as she squats in front of the temporarily-out-of-commission head vampire, simple, breathy words carry great magnitude from her lips to his ears. "Nothing can stand between us. 

"Not the world. 

"Not its inhabitants. 

"And that includes you."

The air is choked with rage, and sweat, and gun fire, and lies, and blood, and death, and a brewing of an end that they will not see coming until its blow hits their faces, knocking their eyes into the back of their heads, resulting in a loss of something; not necessarily sight. 

Viktor begins to rise, startling Selene, though she does not allow it to be displayed. He roughly joggles his head, cracking his neck, blinking those bloodshot eyes. She hastily retrieves a Beretta from its holster, competently cocking it straight in Viktor's direction, daring him to make a move, just one, just one fucking move. But he observes her stoically. Do something! she mulishly thinks. *Do something you weasel! Let me shoot you! Let me end this hell!* 

He unseals his lips and shapes a lurid snarl. "I never thought this day would ever come again . . . Ah, my child, you hate me for the justice I commenced and the justice I will commence tonight." His voice mounts five octaves. "I am standing between you two! I will be standing there until you make me move!" A crackled laughter you would most likely hear from a old hag in a childhood fairy tale is what comes forth from his mouth. "But that is a journey, a new and sinister war in itself! My wishes will be done! To that I assure you!" He gasps. "You two will never be together!"

Viktor viciously hisses, flashes fang, and trembles from his utter outrage that the situation has even gotten this far. Selene gives her "father" one last glance of mingled love and hate and deep inner despair, to alas, with gigantic spry, snap back the trigger before she even deduces the aftermath which will unfold from her action. All she apprehends is for the dreadful torment to stop, the ripping and shredding and rearranging of her loyalties and faith, and the towering threat to Michael's safety to stop by any means, by any means needed.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

"Enough." She solemnly whispers, discarding two glossy tears from her vampiric eyes, while she perceives the icy and smooth silver bullets soar across the room to bombard Viktor's chest with gaping little holes, opening a dam of ruby blood to coat the already submerged floor with more of the hot vital fluid. 

Her own cartridge is empty. The gun is considered useless at the moment. She flings her trusty Beretta aside, now dependent upon its just as adequate twin that is resting nicely on her hip holster, if any more jeopardy intends to howl, chomp, or shot at her heels. 

He stutters, wobbles, like a puppet whose strings have been gruesomely slashed and now the poor puppet has no support and is failing dismally on its own. Those gentle eyes of a capitol liar and master trickster cast her a scornful look of indignation, before his knees betray him by waning to the point where he falls.

And not desiring to stick around for his miraculous come back, Selene, in a gale of a bitter and sharp winter breeze, pitches her self down the Viktor induced hole in the wall, barely making an audible splash when she hits the flooded region. If any other eyes were to witness the sight of her hasty departure they would shriek that they saw only a raven blur, a stupendous and quiet raven blur. Now she begins, with the abnormally keen eyes of her kind, scrounging the interior for Michael, counting the time they have with one and other before some new danger is aroused.


	7. Taste the Hand of Fate

(no words can explain

the all consuming disdain

for the foggy future

that awaits us

but whatever

we are together . . .

at now)

- VaRuka

  
  
  
  


.Taste the Hand of Fate.

  
  
  
  


There. 

She zeros in on Michael.

Bliss, as she has never experienced tingles each nerve from the sight of him. But wait--a beastly roar of unimaginable tone and cogency wracks the underworld, along with the sound of reforming sturdy bones, of wild growth on a humanoid body, and puncturing of fangs through pink gums; a reverberation like listening to a fetus inside a belly mature at a rate of two seconds, if you can imagine such a sound. Now the roar, oh the roar is arcane, unheard of, neoteric, and positively arousing her own primal side. The source of the ghastly newborn cry is something never witnessed before by lycan or vampire or man or anything with eyes, and it stands before Selene as a hellish reincarnation of her dear beloved Michael. 

He is more than supernatural but still holds onto a thread of the natural. Though the body is humanoid, the flesh is glazed azure, the eyes darkest reaches of outer space, the jaw opens to reveal honed fangs specializing in the rupture and tear department, the nails are claws that remind her of actual steak knives connected to fingers, and his once dirty blonde hair now black drapes of oily strands. In the transformation to what he has become, his shirt was torn to pieces nearby, leaving his delicious chest bare, displaying muscular twitching abs. 

Hell, everything is twitching. 

This hybrid is definitely apt for a universe of anything. 

Across from her its eyes open. Their eyes seek out the other, a consensual gaze of intense black meeting intense moon blue, and if you look beyond the surface of this act you will comprehend its significance, for his eyes blaze with an inferno of primal, bestial energy . . . along with flares of humanity, instant recognition of Selene, and most of all: love. Her suspicions are abolished. Yes, it is really Michael behind the somewhat foreign physical body.

She blinks, as most creatures with eyes complete with eyelids do more than fifty times a day, and he has crossed yards and yards to be flush in front of her; with every breath his chest rubs against her breasts, lips a few puffs of air away, and both pairs of eyes so close that their vibrant orbs are all that the other can see. By languished movements like a well oiled machine, he brazenly begins to sniff her entire front, nose flared, eyes on hers, starting from her porcelain face, to her breasts, to her arms, and finally to her stomach, then right back up to her face. Throughout this ritual her eyes remain fixed upon his. He concludes, which presses a go button in Selene, and she is mimicking what he just inflicted on her.

No thoughts enter their minds. These actions are primal, are carnal, are mindless, for spirituality and instincts have nothing to do with the mind, meaning the mind is not needed for this, and what has coaxed their minds' to shut down are their animalistic sides. Animalistic sides-deep, engulfing, and dangerous-that have just fought loose from their bonds, and taken up shop in the front instead of the rear. Part animal, part human, part something more is what these beings are. 

Upon completion of inhaling his heady scent, she expels her lithe pink tongue from the caverns of her tepid mouth. His hand creeps around her and behind her head. She traces a slow path up the side of his face with her tongue, eyes closed in satisfaction. That glossy azure hand behind her head suddenly grips her hair and yanks back, while simultaneously, his mouth assaults her throat and becomes fang deep in her jugular vein. 

A high gasp. The moon hued rings circling her eyes become blazing liquid, whirling around her widening pupils as if the dim light around them has extinguished, and blackness is mantling her vision. The oily black eyes of her hybrid conqueror don't blaze as hers, but convert to a more ardent black, a highly evolved black, a garnished color that would strike an onlooker's blood cold. 

A feminine moan penetrates the air waves. A gargled roar is the reply. 

He doesn't take much blood, only two or three pulls, because it is not the blood he is after, but the leaving of a mark on what is his, now and forever. 

Her claws dig into his sculpted back, mouth agape in an O. He throatily growls, biting down a bit harder, looking off in the distance with vastly frightening gleams of glee in his black eyes. Michael, who went from a puny, human nobody, to a bestial lycanthrope, to an all-powerful vampire/lycan hybrid in a matter of three days, now purely loves this whole crazed experience and what he has escalated to. Michael is somebody, a part of something big, and is something big to somebody, to this vampire, his vampire, his vampire Selene.

She idly fingers her mark upon his throat, pressing and caressing like some obsessed fiend. His arms are constricted around her frame, leaving her arms free, as if he was her own personal pet boa. Their eyes begin to flutter, flutter, flutter to a peaceful close. 

The phrase is so short, but whispered by Selene it appears exquisitely long:

". . . I love you . . ." 

By now we should have deduced that they are unconscious of the vivid chaos prowling through the war zone with them, and as an update it is almost at their exact location in this mess, its speed has hastened since last spoken of.

In a deft movement he retracts his fangs from her throat, nuzzling the exuding wound with an over abundance of honest affection, occasionally licking it. She releases a drawn out sigh, then quivery inhales, rubbing her wet cheek against his. Wet, for tears have begun a marching procession down her them, depositing in their quake her cold exterior, completely and utterly. The last remains of the old Selene are moistening her paramour's left cheek. 

He purrs for her, and she purrs right on back.

As if her last statement was the prelude to something else, she shakily coos into his attentive ear. "Oh, I feel it . . . love . . . emotions . . . Michael."

She harshly scrapes her fangs over her mark on him, causing a spike in his serene mood, and an instant reaction in his body--an appreciative growl, jerking of muscles. And the passion since their first true meeting has been augmenting, as square wooden blocks put on top of the other, topples over to veil the floor with blocks; overshadowing the entire room with pulsing squares of passion. 

His mouth commences laying down zealous kisses, like a blind man reading his first brail, from her delicate throat, up to her sleek jaw line, and onward to her damp cheek, and finally their mouths viciously meet. His hands loosen their hold upon her entire form to clutch her hips. The kiss escalates into a headstrong open-mouth. She strokes her nails down his cheeks, drawing ruby lines, retaliating with fever as if he was the Blarney stone. Over time, his hands ascend to hug her body to him once more, not bearing to have her any farther.

The moment is more precious than anyone outside of the both of them will ever know. Their love is so tenacious, you can almost see the love sparking from them like a sliced electric cord. It is almost a blinding halo shielding them from the monstrosity of their circumstances. 

A crisp sound of metal piercing skin like a piece of paper being poked through with a pen, drops into their ears. 

  
  



	8. You Should Have Bit

(how will you survive

if your heart simply canceled?

what will you contrive

from its wretched absence?

that death is within reach

waiting for you close your eyes

and something has died in you

has unwound its lovely ties

oh, was it not a blinding fragment,

of a special gift of sunshine?)

- VaRuka

  
  
  
  


.You Should Have Bit.

  
  
  
  


She evulses her head back, their lips abruptly parting, tiny sounds of choking emitting from her now prone form. Michael snaps his black eyes wide, jarring senses loose from the Selene haze, body tensing up, very much alarmed by the ominous noise, and sees the formidable grimacing Viktor, wounded but obviously not enough but feet away. A howl accumulates in his throat, he turns his gaze to Selene, sense of smell going haywire at the scent of fresh blood. His beloved flickers her eyelids upwards, parading her illuminate azure vampiric eyes that remind him of the swollen full moon, now conveying cold shock with a mixture of stupendous pain.

Viktor shoves his sword deeper.

Selene gasps.

Warm blood begins journeying down her arched back, streaming over Michael's hands in thick ruby lines. A sword's noxious tip pokes into his chest. His eyes dart down, then just as hastily up. The hybrid stands stock still with her clutched desperately in his arms, eyes scrounging hers for some particle of the peace and joy that were there before, to no avail, sending all his elation evaporating to float up into the proverbial clouds and rain bleak droplets of despair. Viktor rotates his magnificent sword clockwise, stirring round Selene's pierced heart into a hematic stew with bits of tissue as meat; a meal fit for ancient warlords who would eat their enemy's heart as a sign of superiority. Out from her throat is another, more ardent, choking sound as if something is lodged in her esophagus and will never leave.

The fluid of life, in all life, is now fleeing the vampiress at a rapid pace--so exits life, so is entering death.

Viktor snags this tragic moment, where a loved one to him and the blended being of their species, is clearly dying by his hand, and offers what condolences he can, in such a one track state of mind. "I am gravely apologetic, but my will must be done . . . no matter, at what dear cost."

Condemned Selene pitifully squeaks, not understanding how she can feel this much malady and still be alive, and focuses her failing vision on a frozen Michael. Her lips press hard against his, thus she pulls back. With her last scraps of strength, vacuums up enough air to attempt a repetition of three little words, that to Michael sound like a vocalization of utopia coming from her:

"I . . ." 

Her voice wanes like an ending of a song, vision expires, and so does her grip upon this veracity; she has departed for the next one, whatever and wherever that may be. A vampire's most susceptible area is their heart, jab it through, and they are dead, turn it into batter, and they are dead, but the killer gets more satisfaction. Viktor knows this, and has just used his knowledge effectively.

In a split-second the roof of the war collapses about them. From every entrance gushes forth half-transformed lycan and werewolves battling gun toting vampires; some in hand to hand combat exerting all their energy and going in for the kill; some are shooting off magazines after magazines at each other, not aiming any longer, just letting it rip; all completely berserk in their plight to eradicate the other. Viktor withdraws his evil sword. The silence is fractured down to ash, allowing an onslaught of savage violence and gunfire to invade Viktor and Michael's ears, but oh, they hear nothing, see nothing, but the body of their cherished Selene--vacated, immobile, dead--bonelessly slouching onto Michael, head on his shoulder, face in the nook of his neck, so close to her vampire bite. 

Michael speedily hitches his head back, and--

The howl that was compiling suddenly exits through Michael's mouth, ricocheting from each wall, thundering about the underworld, entering every single ear, tapping an instinct in the recipients that it is a howl of abandonment, and that the creature who released it can not be held responsible for its next action, all bets are off kiddies, the rational mind has totally left the building, this creature does not care if it dies, and will now do utterly anything to avenge . . .

Can you say showdown? 

From that action, silence is deftly built back up, shutting off the noise of the war like a flicking a light switch down. The vampires and lycanthropes halt in mid-battle, crane their necks in Viktor and Michael's direction, instantly verifying a distressed Viktor and curious about the other fellow tenderly holding the, clearly just deceased, female vampire; thoughts of battle no where to be found for the moment in them, yet in the watched, belligerence is written in bold black ink up, down, and across their persons.

With loving movements the hybrid places the body of the woman-vampire that snared his heart in her pale hands, and gave him hers, onto a slab of disturbed concrete, above the quieting water. In his fully transformed form, it is very unwise to try and speak, but what the hell, he admires his dead mate, while gutturally whispering to her, the three little words she never got to finish, eyes closed:

"I love you . . ."

Ducking her head, she watches her unsheathed claws urgently rake through the nylon straps, tears brimming in her chocolate eyes. " . . . will kill you on sight . . ." . . .

And so, with acute haste the lycan and the vampire fuse mouths. Within seconds the mouths open to release swaying tongues, which are hedonically put to work. Swiftly, Michael snakes his arm around her waist, virulently tugging her shapely body until it is flush against his, which divulges to her his growing arousal. She promptly responds with an elegant moan of pleasure through the pyretic kisses and gasps of breaths, while also coiling her own arm securely around his neck, arranging the kisses to be deeper . . .

Before they set off she extends one of her hands to his like a little lost child, eyes imploring him to lovingly accept without question, while in the same liquid movement she swipes up one of her balefully loaded Beretta pistols with her other hand. Michael examines her stance with a critical eye, assessing the dragon before him, so dazzling in her porcelain attributes and indubitably deadly. His eyes zero in on her snowy hand . . . and he clasps it in his own. 

An urge to just shout all for one and one for all bubbles forth in him, but he stifles it under the grim circumstances . . .

A rat scrambles past Michael. He hops to the left with a shocked gasp. 

Glancing over at him, she playfully smirks his way. "That's the least of all creatures you should be terrified of at the moment." . . .

Her words feel like a bed of nails they both are cuddling upon, still she is relentless in her speech, and contributes one more sentence:

"But at least we found," Selene licks her mysteriously dry lips, eyes dancing from his as she hordes her emotionally energy for her last words. A pause. Their eyes reconnect as if the connection was never broken, "At least we found what we always thought was lost to our souls, even if but for a blink in the cosmic play of the world, and our very lives." . . .

Selene deviously smiles while licking her razor fangs as a hungry lioness. "Spunky. Another element of you, I like." . . .

His paramour allows the silence to envelope, (still sniffing the air and scanning the tunnel openings for any paramount danger, always on strict alert) then in a sudden thoughtful outburst, just as wistfully answers-shrugging into his optimistic thinking just for his sake, and her own: 

"Michael, let us say we escape this battlefield unscathed, and that this is the big end game between our species . . ." Her heavy pause implants an escalating, red-hot desire for her next words inside of him, producing a need for them as a junkie throbs for a fix, so when she continues in a tissue paper thin voice with ardent love, he mentally breaths a sigh of relief. "Now saying that, I frankly do not care where we venture, as long as I am with you." 

They stop their feet movement up the stairs, eyes connecting for a brief half-second. Silent knowledge of immense caliber is shared through the gesture, and abruptly accompanied by his whispered invocation of:

"Forever?" He widely grins, gauging her blooming smile. "Forever. Yeah. You know, I can deal with that." . . .

Upon completion of inhaling his heady scent, she expels her lithe pink tongue from the caverns of her tepid mouth. His hand creeps around her and behind her head. She traces a slow path up the side of his face with her tongue, eyes closed in satisfaction. That glossy azure hand behind her head suddenly grips her hair and yanks back, while simultaneously, his mouth assaults her throat and becomes fang deep in her jugular vein . . .

As if her last statement was the prelude to something else, she shakily coos into his attentive ear. "Oh, I feel it . . . love . . . emotions . . . Michael." . . .

His mouth commences laying down zealous kisses, like a blind man reading his first brail, from her delicate throat, up to her sleek jaw line, and onward to her damp cheek, and finally their mouths viciously meet. His hands loosen their hold upon her entire form to clutch her hips. The kiss escalates into a headstrong open-mouth. She strokes her nails down his cheeks, drawing ruby lines, retaliating with fever as if he was the Blarney stone. Over time, his hands ascend to hug her body to him once more, not bearing to have her any farther . . .

A crisp sound of metal piercing skin like a piece of paper being poked through with a pen, drops into their ears . . .

A crisp sound of metal piercing skin like a piece of paper being poked through with a pen, drops into their ears . . .

Selene gasps . . .

Warm blood begins journeying down her arched back, streaming over Michael's hands in thick ruby lines . . .

A crisp sound of metal piercing skin like a piece of paper being poked through with a pen, drops into their ears . . .

Out from her throat is another, more ardent, choking sound as if something is lodged in her esophagus and will never leave . . .

Selene gasps . . .

Warm blood begins journeying down her arched back, streaming over Michael's hands in thick ruby lines . . .

She idly fingers her mark upon his throat, pressing and caressing like some obsessed fiend. His arms are constricted around her frame, leaving her arms free, as if he was her own personal pet boa. Their eyes begin to flutter, flutter, flutter to a peaceful close. 

The phrase is so short, but whispered by Selene it appears exquisitely long:

". . . I love you . . ." 

A crisp sound of metal piercing skin like a piece of paper being poked through with a pen, drops into their ears . . .

Selene gasps . . .

Michael's mind is crippled by memories of the short intimate times they had together. His eyelids slide up to witness her body, from head then to her toes, disintegrating into thick flecks of ashes, swathing the slab a darker gray. His love is dead. Really dead. Truly dead. Simply . . . dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. She was murdered by none other than the wretched vampire right in front of him. It is all his fault. Viktor now has to pay a fee, a very hefty fee: his life. It is only fair. A life for a life. 

He shudders inside his body enough air to exhale, "I love you, Selene." and then he is up on his powerful legs, lips drawn to show his fangs, his expression to the point that if looks could kill, his would, but since it can not, he knows he can.


	9. Epilogue

(and so with each day

we drift farther down

such is the way with age 

you adapt a stable frown

if you forever lost

what you lived for)

  
  
  
  


.Epilogue.

  
  
  
  


Since that fateful night in the underworld, the hybrid between lycanthropes and vampires staggers through this earth mourning for a dead vampiress. Those two beings were in love, Romeo and Juliet love, Jesus and his people love, Helen and Paris love, and thus greatly affected by love, there brief moments together felt like an eternity, and that eternity was not enough.

Until a stake is rammed into his heart or liquid silver infiltrates his person, he will continue to be harassed by vivid images and high-quality sounds and imprinted feelings from their time together. His insides are rotten from the loss, mind a distorted botch that if made visual it would resemble Edvard Munch's The Scream, body ripe with immense power and eternal youth, soul longing to reach over the barrier of life and death to rub against hers as a contented cat, at least one more time, one more time. And no one will dare step to him for a fight, for every vampire and lycan can even smell the potency of his strength, which alerts them that they will be dead before he breaks a sweat.

Poor Michael will be around for a while, a long while, wading in his pyretic turmoil, astringently howling into rainy nights, ascending from dust to a breeze; which threads into all the breezes around the world, so if you attentively listen with your whole being, you will catch his howl in the wind.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

I sincerely hope you guys enjoyed my one and only Underworld fanfiction. It was a long writing journey; and I actually completed it. That is one colossal surprise. Usually, I never finish what I start. But hey, it does happen occasionally.   
  


If you want to read any of my other fanfictions, you know how. I encourage it. Very. Very. Much. And, if you do not mind, write me some reviews for this fanfiction or others. Good or bad I am ravenous for them . . .


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